John Derbyshire: “bite me, pal”

“I came late to biology and the human sciences myself, finding physics, astronomy, and information sciences more interesting. The human sciences have fundamentally the same appeal, though. Here are phenomena, features of the world, that I see with my eyes every day. Some people are smart, some are dumb. There are different races, accounted for — pretty obviously — by having their deep ancestry in different parts of the world. Different races seem to have different patterns of capabilities. What’s it all about? Here are some accredited researchers, applying the tools of scientific inquiry — measurement, classification, comparison — to try to find the underlying facts. What’s not to be interested in?

“What’s that you say? It’s wrong to be interested in these things? I’m supposed to pretend not to notice those things I’m noticing? Those aren’t scientists: they are bad people with dark motives only pretending to do objective research? That’s what you’re saying? Okay, let me put this as politely as it deserves to be put: Bite me, pal.”

(…)

“If you hang out with race-realist types a lot — and yes, I do, and count myself one — a thing you notice is that a high proportion of them, of us, are antisocial loners. Trust me, it’s not just because of their opinions that race realists don’t win any popularity prizes. (And as a corollary, not many of them, of us, are successful in a worldly way. Poor social skills. Jim Watson, though world-famous for what he did, fits the pattern. Talk to anyone who knows him and expressions like ‘difficult,’ ‘prickly,’ and ‘loose cannon’ soon turn up.)

(…)

“To the degree that he has any preference, the antisocial loner is an Americanophile. The U.S.A. advertises itself as the nation of individualism, where you judge a man, and he judges himself, by what he can accomplish — by, as somebody once said ‘the content of his character’ — not by which group he belongs to.

“If you are not that type — and most people, even most Americans, are not — it’s much more difficult for you to discuss human-group differences.”

I certainly don’t believe that the Church should change with the times. It is my responsibility to conform to the Church, not the other way around — and since I can’t do that right now, I have distanced myself from the Church and become more of a recreational Catholic, at least for today.

But it seems self-evident that the founding of America was part of God’s plan, and that it is unique among nations. So if that is a heresy, I am a heretic